


Surveillance

by SelanPike



Category: MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SelanPike/pseuds/SelanPike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of why you chose the apartment you live in, as opposed to that nice, cheap place closer to your favorite tea shop, was the fact that it had a secret room. In the past you used to use this space to play imagination fort, but lately you’ve adapted it to a new purpose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surveillance

**Author's Note:**

> Hmmhmm why yes, I do suck at titles.

            Part of why you chose the apartment you live in, as opposed to that nice, cheap place closer to your favorite tea shop, was the fact that it had a secret room. It was too good to pass up. Part of you went back to being a kid, imagining being able to hide from the world in some room only you knew about. You had to have it.

            It’s adjacent to the living room, hidden behind a bookcase. To your dismay, there is no lever triggered by pulling out a specific book—though you’re continually telling yourself that you’ll install one. Instead there’s simply a button, which you have covered up discreetly with a painting of an elf, which opens the latch and allows you to pull the bookcase open and enter.

            It’s a tiny room, and likely had been converted from a closet. The ceiling is low and you would have to slouch to stand in it if you didn’t do that all the time anyway. In the past you used to use this space to play imagination fort, but lately you’ve adapted it to a new purpose.

            Ever since the Kingpin incident you’ve grown a little obsessed with the criminal elements of the city. Before then you hadn’t really paid attention, you just took whatever cases came your way, solved them the way you solved Sudoku puzzles, and then went back to staring into space or playing in your fort or whatnot. Not now. Being locked in your office, dying and coming back, and having to face the horror of the Demonhead has taught you the value of preventative measures. You will not allow such things to happen again.

            So you’ve dedicated yourself to surveillance. Your job tends to lead you into all sorts of gang territory and criminal hideouts, and you’ve taken to surreptitiously planting wiretaps and cameras in them. You’ve subscribed to several spy magazines and catalogues and have even started to learn to build your own spying devices. This room, then, became your observation room. The walls are lined with TV screens and headphone jacks and endless switches to allow you to toggle back and forth between feeds. You have a few sets of headphones lying about. The inside of the bookcase-door is also a bookcase, which is lined with endless VHS tapes.

            If anyone is planning anything in this city, you will see it. Nothing escapes your omniscient ogle.

            Your favorite subject to observe is, of course, Diamonds Droog. In Kingpin’s absence the Midnight Crew have practically taken over the city, and as such are the most likely to cause serious harm. You watch all of them as best as you can, but Droog seemed the most dangerous to you so he was the one on whom you directed your focus. You don’t suspect that he would do something as reckless as descending to demonhood or something, no—that strikes you more as something Slick might do—but he would be the one to make such a thing possible. It was his careful calculations that brought the Crew to power, and it would be his careful calculations that would bring the downfall of the City.

            You know. Hypothetically. You aren’t about to take any chances.

            But now you’ve fallen in love with him and the whole thing seems weird.

            The spying came first, you are quick to remind yourself. You did not start this just to watch him undress or anything like that. In fact, even in the privacy of your secret room, huddled up on your little stool that you sit on because there’s no room for a chair, you still avert your eyes when he’s indecent on camera. He would never know you watched, but _you_ would know, and you couldn’t bear the shame. No, you started this to collect evidence. To gain advance knowledge of his plans. Watching him play his saxophone shirtless in his livingroom, and watching every morning as he spends an hour filling out crosswords after breakfast until you realized you’d found The One was just an unfortunate and unforeseen consequence.

            It isn’t like you’re going to stop. Diamonds Droog may be your kind-of-sort-of boyfriend, but he is still a dangerous criminal and he still needs to be monitored. In fact, having access to his apartment—to his _bedroom_ —has only made planting new cameras all the easier. You can see his every move now, all despite his efforts to stop you.

            You suspect his efforts are only half-hearted. Sometimes he talks to you, knowing you can hear him. He says things that make you wish you could just reach through the monitor and…

            Well, no, he’s probably just trying to tempt you into showing up at his doorstep, confirming his suspicions that you were watching. You can’t really give in to that.

            The VHS tapes on your bookshelf are mostly of him now. Various things he’s done on camera while you weren’t in this room to watch. To be honest you haven’t gotten around to watching most of them, and you’re starting to run out of room for more. You definitely won’t allow them to spill out into the rest of your house. You should probably just tape over them, but it pains you to destroy potential evidence…

            A knock at your door sends you jolting, accidentally bumping your head on the ceiling as you scramble to your feet. You pull off your headphones, toss your notebook full of observations and doodles aside, and bolt out of the secret room. You run to the front door, looking in the peephole to see Sleuth and Dick. You take a breath, hoping the look of guilt that always permeates your face when you’ve been spying on people isn’t too apparent.

            You open the door and Sleuth immediately grabs you, dragging you down so he can get an arm around your shoulder. “Pickle! Pickle. Where’ve you been?”

            “Wh-what? I’ve been—“

            “It’s poker night!” Sleuth starts giving you a gentle noogie. “You forgot again, huh?”

            “Oh, ahhh, um.” You pull away from Sleuth and he lets you go. “S-sorry. I—I was just… working on some, ah, some things…”

            “Prob’ly jerkin’ it,” Dick says. You frown and are about to scold him for his atrocious manners when he catches sight of something behind you and says, “Hey, what’s that?”

            You look behind you and see, to your horror, that you left the bookcase door open. You scramble to go shut it, but Sleuth pushes past you and looks inside.

            “Woah, Pickle, the hell is this?”

            “It’s—It’s—No no no don’t look, don’t look…” You weakly try to pull him away, but you can’t move him an inch.

            “Are you watching Droog?” Sleuth asks, looking at a monitor.

            “Hah, I was right!” Dick laughs. “He _was_ jerkin’ it.”

            “N-n-n-no! No!” Your face turns beet red and you pray to GPI to please stop fondly regarding everything and kindly send a bolt of lightning to kill you where you stand. “I’d never—I wasn’t—“

            “So I guess this is how you keep getting info on stuff, huh,” Sleuth says as he pokes at your headphones. “Hey, is that a feed of Slick’s apartment?”

            “Ah… o-one of his apartments, y-yes…”

            “This is a little creepy,” he says.

            “S-sorry, sorry.” You wring your hands. “I—I can dismantle that one, sorry, I don’t mean to—“

            Neither of them seem to be listening to you. Dick starts hitting switches, seeing what comes up on the monitors, and you cringe as he breaks a few of them. “Hey, you got any cameras in the Felt mansion or anythin’?” he asks.

            You shake your head. “I—I’ve planted them, but th-they always seem to—to find them and…”

            “What’s all the tapes?” Sleuth asks. He doesn’t wait for an answer, but rather starts reading the labels aloud. “DD 10/25 Kitchen, DD 10/25 Bedroom, DD… Honestly, I didn’t have you pegged for the stalking type.”

            “S-sorry,” is all you manage.

            “So if you got videos of his bedroom,” Dick says, “An’ you’re always doin’ the sideways tango, then does that mean—“

            “Hey, I do _not_ want to imagine that!” Sleuth says, smacking Dick upside the head. “We do not talk about Pickle naked.”

            “I’m just sayin’!”

            You freeze. Oh god. You hadn’t thought about that. Several of these tapes definitely, _definitely_ have recordings of you and Droog being intimate. Oh god oh god how did that never occur to you?

            Evidence be damned. Once you get these two out of your apartment, you are going to start a bonfire and burn every tape.

            “Anyway c’mon,” Sleuth steps out of the secret room and pats your arm. “Still plenty of time to get poker night underway.”

            “Y-yes,” you mumble, not really all that keen on playing card games.

            “Fuck poker night,” Dick says, hoisting himself up on your stool, “I wanna play with this shit. Got any cameras on Whore Island?”

            “No!”

            “Give it a rest, Ace,” Sleuth says. “You’re making him uncomfortable.”

            “He’s always uncomfortable, no big change there.” Regardless, Dick climbs down and exits the room. You quickly close the door, pushing it against the frame as hard as you can to make sure the lock catches.

            “P-please don’t… don’t tell anyone,” you plead.

            “’Course we won’t,” Sleuth says.

            “Speak for yourself,” Dick says, “This shit’s hilarious, Sonhearst’ll get a real kick outta—“

            Sleuth elbows Dick in the gut. “You’re not telling anybody, got that?”

            Dick glowers. “Jeez… fine.”

            Sleuth puts his arm around your shoulders again, leading you out of your apartment. “Still, maybe you should cool it on this stalker shit? Just a little?”

            “Ah… y-yes. Yes, perhaps,” you say. You definitely need to turn the cameras off when you have plans to see Droog, in any case.

            “I mean, there’s being vigilant, and then there’s just being obsessive,” he goes on.

            “Yes,” you say. Maybe there’s some way to make the cameras shut off when you’re within range of them. Some sort of interference device? You could hide it in your shoe. Droog probably wouldn’t think to look for anything odd in your shoes.

            “I mean, their headquarters is probably okay, since that’s where they do all their crime, but Droog’s apartment? And _Slick’s_ apartment? … Hey, are you listening?”

            “Hm? Yes.” You nod.

            “Okay,” he says. He knows when you haven’t been paying attention. “Just think about it.”

            The three of you exit the building, on your way to the bar where you spend your Thursday nights. As you walk you take note of three cameras you’ve planted in the area, remembering that there are still plenty of places between them where a crime could happen that you can’t see. Maybe you need more control over your cameras, you need ways to turn them off. But you couldn’t bear to have any less.


End file.
